A biography for Peter Careyhasn’t been written yet.
“Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry.”
“Culture is the way for a country to know itself.”
“My greatest pleasure is to invent. My continual mad ambition is to make something true and beautiful that never existed in the world before.”
“I was very anxious when I was writing 'Oscar And Lucinda.' I would take other books off the shelf to check my chapter length was OK.”
“I always pity people who have to write my plot synopses.”
“I think that thing about the destruction of the world is there all the time, it's there every day when we look out the window.”
“I don't separate my books into historical novels and the rest. To me, they're all made-up worlds, and both kinds are borne out of curiosity, some investigation into the past.”
“I woke up in Australia almost every day for the first 47 years of my life. When I left, I didn't discard that, didn't reject that, didn't forget that. Not even New York City can wipe that out.”
“The great thing about using the past is that it gives you the most colossal freedom to invent. The research is necessary, of course, but no one writes a novel to dramatically illustrate what everybody already knows.”
“Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.”
“The Australian cast of mind is not something I would want to be without - and I couldn't be without. It's not a choice.”
“I used to say when I was younger, 'I'm exhausted; writers can only write for four hours a day and that's done.' Now I find, as I'm getting older and I'm more aware of time, I can actually write all day.”
“I don't think you have the right to shout about other people's private life.”
“To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.”
“I'm interested in where we are, where we're going, where we've come from.”